Tonight’s theme is songs of the cinema, and the mentor is Jamie Foxx. Foxx was a mentor last season for Rat Pack week, just a couple of weeks after stepping all over his tongue in an interview about Miley Cyrus. I’ll try to keep an open mind about him, but I admit that I don’t like him much. I liked him before that interview, though. He was amazing as Ray Charles in the movie “Ray”.

I have been thinking about some titles for Idol contestants to use for their albums. Here are a few:

Didi Benami- “For Rebecca” (her friend that died in a car accident)

Lilly Scott- “Blue notes from a White Chick”

Alex Lambert- “Green Bananas” or “Songs Tim Urban can’t sing”

Janelle Wheeler- “My Guitars have Legs”

Ashley Rodriguez- “I’m gonna Stick My Boot Up Simon’s….”

Joe Munoz/Michelle Delamore- “Yeah, we were on Idol. Really!!!!”

Tim Urban- “Grooving to Donnie Osmond” or “Karaoke Classics”

Paige Miles- “Church by Day, Honkytonk by Night”

Katie Stevens- “Queen of the Prom” or “For My Grandmother”

Lacey Brown- “The Hoarse Whisperer”

Siobhan Magnus- “Screams in the Key of Life” or “Raggedy Ann in Combat Boots”

Lee Dewyze- “My Favorite Hip/Hop Anthems” or “Bang the Guitar Slowly”

Michael Lynche- “Big Easy” or “Big, Period”

Casey James- “Rockin’ the Pony” or “Bleatings, Earthlings”

Crystal Bowersox- “MamaSox” or “Crystal’s Blues Persuasion”

Ok, enough of that. The final four are singing their own song as well as being paired up for a couple of duets. Adam and Allie blew the doors off of “Slow Ride” together last year, and that performance was one of the main reasons why Adam picked Allie to open for him on his Nationwide Tour this summer.

The singers, the songs-

Lee Dewyze, “Kiss From a Rose”, Batman (Seal)

Lee had some trouble with his breathing, but he hit the notes fairly well for such a demanding melody. I didn’t much like the arrangement. It was too busy and tried to do too much. This song really needs more than a minute and a half. Lee sings pretty stock in his range, hitting his high notes the same way every time – and hitting his low notes the same every time. Give the kid a year of serious professional experience, which he is going to get, and let’s hear him sing this one again. He will be able to make it soar, soar, soar…..

The judges weren’t kind. I guess that I agree with them. Lee has had better nights.

Michael Lynche, “Will You Be There”, Free Willy (Michael Jackson)

Mike doesn’t have good rhythm in his phrasing. He tends to bite things off with grammatical inflections that sound really corny. He was singing a song by one of the true masters of dynamic phrasing, and I think that he was too aware of Michael Jackson’s version. It kept creeping into his own version, and taking him out of his comfort zone. Also, there wasn’t any emotion at all in his voice, his face or his body language. He wasn’t singing the song so much as he was lifting it like he was doing reps with free weights.

The judges were mixed. Simon was fairly positive, and very funny for Simon. He had never heard of “Free Willy”. Ryan got off a good line, asking “Dori” (Ellen’s scatterbrained bluefish character from “Finding Nemo”) to explain it to him.

First Duet:

Lee and Crystal, “Falling Slowly”, Once (The Frames)

Kris Allen did this one last season. Lee and Crystal started out a little bit tentative, but once they hit a couple of tuning fork harmonies they took off and blew the doors off of the song. They ended about as tentatively as they began, but the in between was really, really cool.Crystalis perfectly in her element as a harmony singer, and she was terrific. Lee was also very good, feeding off ofCrystal.

The judges gushed. I wouldn’t put it up there with “Slow Ride”, but it was terrific.

Casey James, “Mrs. Robinson”, The Graduate (Simon and Garfunkel)

Uh oh….

Casey brought out the Mandolyn. Uh oh, my butt. The arrangement was really good. Casey stripped it down, with the mandolyn and some string accompaniment in the background. He slowed it down, giving it more of a Paul Simon feel than the quick pop shuffle of the original; kind of like “Slip Sliding Away” or “Homeward Bound”. His vocal was tight and in tune, though I wasn’t thrilled with some of his melody choices. His eyes were a little bit wet at the end of the song; that was a dramatic contrast from the first two solos, which weren’t emotional at all.

The judges got all over Kara about the song lyrics, and she was beet red. Simon dunned him for the song, but he stopped short of calling him in danger of going home. He stated a general distain for all of the solo performances so far.

Crystal Bowersox, “I’m Alright”, Caddyshack (Kenny Loggins)

Terrific; mini moment. What else is there to say? I loved it, loved it, loved it.Crystalis back, confident and loose tonight. Was it perfect? No, not quite. Amazing? Absolutely. We should be talking about this one for awhile. I can’t wait to hear the studio version….

The judges were positive, but not as much as I was. How could they be? Me, I love that song period, and this cover was every bit as amazing in its own way as Kenny Loggins’ original cut. Just cooooooool…

Casey was a little bit wooden as they started out, worrying about his guitar too much. Mike was fine, solid as ever. They really got going when Casey joined in with Mike on the chorus, doing the harmony. They hit one really sour note together and Casey lost the harmony thread once early, but the rest of the notes were very good. I’d call it somewhat clumsy, but it had some really nice moments. They ended it very well.

The judges got a little carried away, gushing about both duets and dismissingCrystal’s moment with “I’m Alright”.

Safe to in Danger-

Crystal

Lee

Casey

Mike

Crystalis almost certainly safe, but this late you just never know. Lee might be in danger, but his momentum has been very strong towards being the second finalist. Mike and Casey, flip a coin. I put Casey on top, mostly because of the outstanding musicianship he showed off tonight.

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Another aimless, pointless roundtable discussion, from deep in the bowels of the Bajolers archives

Rushmore Revisited: Rock-n-Roll’s Mighty Mountain of Momentous Mayhem

T: Hey, guys, what are the four songs on your Mt. Rushmore of the rock-n-roll era? I don’t mean just rock songs, but the songs of the 1955-2018 era. We are old, so I assume most of them will be old, but that’s up to you. Here are the criteria we came up with yesterday, plus Gary is a criteria fiend, so I’m sure he’ll find more.

Yapping Dogs

Headline after headline this morning, from every direction, says something to the effect of “What happened to the Celtics?” or “Why do the Celtics suck now, when the Cavs sucked last week?” or “The Cavs are now the greatest team in the HISTORY of the – ”

Stop it. Just stop it.

NBA fans are great, but NBA writers are a bunch of reactionary yapping dogs, with the memory of an Alzheimer’s patient in a lethe field. Every year we go through this.

Once again, and PAY ATTENTION, all you journalistic Chicken LIttles who think the sky is falling every time it rains:

– In the NBA playoffs, the series don’t start until the home team loses. Now say that about 15 times, to lock it in.

– Seriously, 15 times. In the NBA, the series don’t start until the home team loses. SAY it.

The Cavs/Celtics series wasn’t over after the Celts won big in game one. It wasn’t over when the Cavs inexplicably stopping trying in the third quarter of game two, electing to huck up brick after brick instead of running their halfcourt offense.

Road teams occasionally steal game one, or catch a team on a bad day and

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About Barstool Politickin’

This slack chat website is the brainchild of notorious subversives (and notorious slackers) Johnny “Cake” Hunter and Terry “Chatterin’ Teeth” Vent. You can probably guess who got first pick of nicknames.

These guys have been off the grid for decades. We thought they were traveling the Pacific Rim, trading inflatable Harold Stassen dolls to the natives for Polynesian weed, but we found them hiding in the witness protection program. They entered the program in 1983, after they testified in the infamous “we can’t believe it’s not butter” truth in advertising scandal that took down Orville Redenbacher.

One of them joined a cult and the other one went into the insurance business; I can never keep straight which one sold his soul to an evil demagogue, and which one sells flowers at the airport. Both of them are addicted to Hawaiian pizza, so try not to get roped into a lunch date.

Ideologically, they pretty much hate everybody. Both have cast ballots for chronic losers from the major parties, the occasional third party, and once (I think) for a mollusk. Neither one of them voted for Donald Trump, but they think Ivanka is super hot.

Enjoy the madness.

We have no idea who this is

regards,

D.B. Cooper (shh.)

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GARY FLETCHER

I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that while writing I tend to skip over little words like ‘the’ and ‘and’ and the like. I also sometimes skip over letters. For example, the word ‘look’ turns into ‘lok.’

It gets worse. Now I’m occasionally missing entire words, a real problem for reading comprehension, as you can imagine.

What’s next? Perhaps I’ll write one opening sentence, then the final sentence and completely omit everything between the two. To wit, the following article:

First sentence: “We’re always walking by this spooky old house,” my wife said.

Last sentence: Just understand that you are competing with ghosts for my attention.

The thought amuses me. It’s like one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ books. Anyway, here’s the adventure I chose.

Train of Thought

“We’re always walking by this spooky old house,” my wife said.

We sure are. The two of us go for a constitutional that takes us through the same neighborhoods with routes only slightly different from day to day. Sometimes that means travelling north along Dartford Street to the intersection of Lorne Avenue. The house is one of those old three story jobs with a full basement. It has those narrow, rectangular windows at ground level that let light into the basement and, if you are in the basement, allow you to

Terry’s Latest Rant: Picking my Ideological Poison

I’m not liberal, conservative, a Trump lover or a Trump hater, but I have been accused of being all four. To be clear, my axis goes something like this.

(1) Total, relentless equality is both stupid and against human nature. So stop it with the PC Nazi garbage, use the bathroom that matches your plumbing (not your sexual preferences) and grow up.
(2) Cooperation is a virtue, but so is competition. The key is to balance them out. Don’t outlaw profit, but maybe outlaw franchising, so someone else can make a dammed profit.
(3) we can’t have an incompetent president with the power to blow things up. HIs views on race make him an asshole, but his views on reading and learning are what make him a danger to the nation.
(4) we can’t substitute rights for responsibilities. If you are proud of your vote, you dammed well better have taken some time to know what you were voting for. Or you are nothing more than a faceless lamb, proud of your missing wool as you march to slaughter with your nose in the air.

Most important, know where you are getting your information. Don’t let yourself be sold your news. Read newspapers – plural, don’t just let one guy be your source – and turn off those cable news filler shows. Don’t get your news from Facebook or Twitter or those other so-called media sites (like MSN) that treat gossip like news. It’ll just confuse you.

Contact Us

Email Terry: ventboys@outlook.com

Email Gary: garyafletcher@shaw.ca

Email John:

Or leave a comment under any of the articles.

We aren’t looking for help generating traffic, so don’t waste your time on that, but we’d love to hear from anyone interested in civil discussion, or who has a good knock knock joke, horse racing tip or dirty limerick.

Strangeland

When I read Kathy Gannon’s series about women in Pakistan, I accidentally began at the finish and worked my way back to the start. The backwards view gave me a strange perspective on the culture I was reading about. Rather than reaching the end with hope, understanding that the wheel of change grinds slowly and […]

Sep. 21, 2015 I like Bernie Sanders. Bread and circuses candidates are always popular; I mean, who doesn’t like free bread and circuses? Sep. 28 The latest wisdom … Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz will face off in the end or – if a two-man race doesn’t happen – there will be a brokered convention. […]

based on footage from Vintage Baseball’s YouTube page June 13, 2016 Dizzy Dean leaned forward to take the sign, his hands jostling for position in the crude, tiny leather mitt on his left hand while his elbows performed a lazy, distracted chicken dance in the folds of his wool jersey shirt. Once the catcher gave […]

December 4, 2016 (excerped from a previous article) Do we visualize Willie, Mickey and the Duke, Joe DiMaggio and Ken Griffey Jr. when we think about centerfielders? I do, and it muddies my judgment. I wind up comparing every new centerfielder to the very best who ever played, and I lose perspective. I forget what […]

The Little Red Haired Girl May 11, 2016 During American Idol’s season nine audition rounds, judge Kara Dioguardi gave a serious, meaningful look to a skinny, freckled, ginger-haired hippy girl and said, “You’re great!” with such emphasis that I figured the little hipster in the granny glasses was going to be one of the stars […]

Who cried wolf? There has never been an easier question to answer. Who cried wolf? Well, who has done 98 percent of the crying since last summer? Blame the media if you prefer, but the media is just us, telling each other what’s going on. In the Twitter/Instagram/Facebook world, we are literally the media. Even […]

Her name was fake, but the ink-stained wretch in the monogrammed bloomers was real. Let’s face it; she had to be. Her tale fails miserably as a work of fiction. It’s too pat, too perfect. No self-respecting publisher would buy it. Nellie Bly was thrust into poverty at an early age, during a period in […]

Fletch, the last thing I want to do is impugn the reputation of scrupulous salesmen. There needs to be a different term, I guess. Salesman is taken by the Trump types, though – and they ain’t the types to give anything up, so they ain’t leavin’ – so I suppose it’s gonna have to be […]

For judgment, perspective is everything. I wrote this on April 21, 2016 in response to a poster on BJOL whose perspective is, to put it mildly, a bit demanding. It’s impossible to generate perfect results from imperfect data – and imperfect life forms. I think of it as the 1-10-30 rule, but there are more […]

Like the rest of America, I have been trying to figure out why Donald Trump, a political laughingstock for decades, is suddenly a serious presidential candidate. Why are so many Americans backing Trump, a man with no political skills or experience, for the nation’s top job? To understand the Trump phenomenon, It helps to to […]

Healthcare in English

Burning barn insurance: When your barn catches fire, you immediately call the Allstate office upwind for a quote. In our context, this is the tendency for people to only buy insurance when they anticipate that there will be a need for it (also known as adverse selection).

CAT scan: Computerized axial tomography, used to look inside your body and see just where the cheeseburgers are blocking your arteries.

Co-insurance: The percentage of medical expenses not covered by your insurance; in an 80/20 plan such as Medicare, for example, the 20% is your coinsurance.

Co-payment: A payment charged to you when you see a doctor. Differs from co-insurance in that it is fixed; you will pay the same co-payment at every doctor’s visit regardless of the services you receive.

Contractual adjustment: A discount that is applied to the doctor’s fee by the insurance carrier in order for the doctor to participate in the insurance carrier’s network. Typically around 40% of the doctor’s gross bill.

Deductible: An amount charged to you before your insurance will begin to pay.

Flexible spending account (FSA): A plan which allows employees to put money into an account pre-tax to be used for medical expenses. This money must be spent in the tax year in which it is deducted.

Health Savings Account (HSA): A plan which allows employees to put money into an account pre-tax to be used for medical expenses. Differs from an FSA in that the money in the account can be carried over from year to year.

In-network: A physician who participates with a particular insurance carrier.

Medicaid: Government insurance plan for low-income people.

Medicare: Government insurance plan for senior citizens and the disabled.

Out-of-network: A physician who does not participate with a particular insurance carrier.

Palliative care: Care that is intended to relieve pain only; not curative or therapeutic treatment.

Participation: When a doctor agrees to accept an insurance carrier’s discounted rate (plus co-payments and co-insurance, if any) as payment in full for services rendered.